Blockchain Assets Trading Firm Polychain Capital Raises $10 Million
San Francisco-based Polychain Capital, a startup involved blockchain assets trading has reportedly raised $10 million in funding from investors including VC firms Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures.
Polychain Capital is notably led by Olaf Carlson-Wee, the first employee of prominent bitcoin and ether exchange Coinbase. Launched in September 2016 with $5 million from 30 investors, Polychain aims to facilitate investments in blockchain-based digital tokens.
Speaking to Forbes , Carlson-Wee stated:
There will be many types of assets codified into the blockchain, and they are all not just going to be on the bitcoin blockchain – it’s going to be a number of digital assets here. And the best way to invest in that is a diversified portfolio.
Beyond returns for investors, the ex-Coinbase employee also sees these digital tokens providing significantly new monetizing opportunities for developers, noting that developers and founders gain rewards at a “protocol level. If developers retained a portion of their blockchain’s tokens to eventually see the platform gain in popularity, demand meeting limited supply would push a token’s value. “So it acts sort of like equity in a startup to incentivize the founder and employees,” adds Carlson-Wee,” but it’s really monetizing an open source peer-to-peer protocol, not a company.”
The fund is targeting investors interested in a hedge fund with a diverse number of blockchain-based digital assets that could, one day, prove lucrative by investing in networks that could conceivably be the future protocols of the internet.
“The hope here is to own small portion of networks that become the future infrastructure of the internet,” Carlson-Wee added, “…and potentially compete or disrupt many of the centralized web services that dominate the internet today.”
Ultimately, the early bitcoiner and industry veteran speculates blockchain-based tokens to be valued in the “trillions of dollars” and that, is Polychain’s lure and big bet for investors.
The $10 million fundraising comes in the same year as the much-publicized and failed $150 million DAO offering, a decentralized crowdfunding project that saw the theft of a third of its ether holdings after being exploited by an unidentified hacker.
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